Dave Kusek is worried about the future of music. So the former vice president at Berklee College of Music and CEO of Berkleemusic, the college’s online education program, has launched an online education platform called New Artist Model.

Kusek says he built the platform to help build a next generation of independent artists. “We as an industry need new pathways for people to develop themselves or be developed as part of a collective. You don’t have a label system working as it did. You don’t have a publishing system working as it did.”

The future of the music business depends on a more vibrant independent class of musicians, says Kusek. “Unless we find ways for new artists to break and reach an audience, the business could stall. That would be horrible.”

New Artist Model is an eight-week program targets performers, recording artists, songwriters, producers and managers. The courses cover topics such as licensing, publishing, e-commerce, concerts, promotion and networking. The first classes begin February 17th.

One key feature is the Career Map. Artists fill out a questionnaire that helps them formulate a plan for recordings, songwriting, performance, marketing strategy, building a team and financing and budgeting the business. “There’s no one to help develop yourself in the classic sense,” explains Kuesek. “No A&R people to take risks on little bands. You’ve got to know more about your career and what the possibilities are.”

Kusek left Berklee in 2012 after building Berkleemusic.com into a leading online source of music education. Just as MOOCs make higher education accessible to anyone with an Internet connection, New Artist Model strives to open music education to a larger audience. Kusek says he has known many people that wanted a career in music but couldn’t afford a traditional music business program.

The pricing is one of the most important elements of the New Artist Platform program. Students have two options. The “Essential Class” costs $297 and allows students to learn at their own pace — a practical option for a musician always on the road. The $997 “Master Class” is a more traditional online education program with group discussions and class assignments. Students of both programs are offered a seven-day money-back guarantee. In comparison, the lowest price for a single course at Berkleemusic.com is $1,200.

Online learning is currently reshaping education. The rise of massive open online courses, known by the acronym MOOCs, has opened up higher education to people around the world. Venture-funded startups such as Coursera and Udacity are partnering with universities to experiment with MOOC programs. Although MOOCs have yet to deliver on their promise — early experiments with Coursera and Udacity have failed — the trend toward accessible, affordable online education is undeniable. Nevertheless, President Obama has included affordable, online education programs such as MOOCs in his plan to make college more affordable and provide opportunity to the middle class.

Kusek wants New Artist Model to help build music’s middle class. Some students may be attracted to the success of independent duo Macklemore & Ryan Lewis, but Kusek knows most artists won’t reach that level. Instead he points to the example of MC Lars, an American rapper and producer that has built a stable career and following over the last ten years. He says MC Lars represents the middle-class lifestyle available to independent musicians able to direct their own careers. “It doesn’t have to be all or nothing.”

Discovering music on your own requires that you listen to a song for a period of time to see if you like it. Sure, if one of your friends tells you about a track you may “discover” it through them, but you will also spend some time listening to the song before you decide if it’s for you. This is the nature of the beast. Music is a time-based phenomenon.

Unlike with videos where you can “time compress” a video into a single frame image that you can easily visually scan, with music there is no alternative format that represents the song that can be easily scanned, except for the song name. This explains why most music interfaces display playlists, with song names as text not unlike in a spreadsheet, or list of song names. These can be easily scanned, but have no direct correlation to the sound or feeling of the song itself. I have always found it odd that in this era of digital music and highly designed interfaces, that most players default to a spreadsheet of song names to present music – true of iTunes, Amazon, Spotify, Rdio and many others. Spreadsheet music players.

Sure you can have a thumbnail of the album cover, but rarely do you see this on a song-by-song basis. Maybe in parts of Beatport or other DJ sites that are focused on tracks, but not generally on the web for the mass consumers of songs. And yes we have also seen many different visual interfaces like Sonorflow that let you visually traverse music genres or the linkage between bands, but these do not convey information about the songs themselves or the emotions that they convey.

What if we had a way to make a song come alive visually? This was the whole idea behind the original MTV and it was wildly successful for decades. What is the online equivalent, or even better, what can we do to push the whole boundary of music discovery and showcasing to new levels by embracing the time-based nature of music and coupling it with visual expression and a modern interface that lets you experience and interact with music in new and interesting ways. And no, I’m not talking about the waveform displays on Soundcloud.

I am working with a new company called Viinyl which is in the final testing stage for a whole new video-based version of their Music Showcasing platform that is very hot. I haven’t seen anything like Viinyl 2.0 and I think it represents a whole new way of presenting music. Viinyl amplifies the emotional content of songs visually, in a way that is enjoyable and super easy to use. This is a whole new way of showcasing music.

Viinyl is re-defining the way music and videos are experienced. In fact their video player is a new way to attract attention, engage an audience with the emotion of a song, and make money on singles and tracks. From a simple URL you can run a full screen video with interactive overlays and gather email, sell tracks and tickets, connect to your social networks and literally showcase music thru video. You can sell any digital file including music and movies, and provide relavent information directly in the context of the song including bios, links, credits, contacts, concert dates, lyrics, etc.

The new platform supports audio file sales with fixed or flexible album pricing (minimum price and Pay What You Want) along with various free distribution options. The software is lightning fast, with just a few clicks, musicians and labels will be able to share their work independently – and hold onto all revenue generated.

The new Viinyl 2.0 LP format delivers a visual playlist, giving listeners and fans a far richer, more immersive and inviting music experience compared with the current spreadsheet format. This new software will be available in the coming weeks.

Please join me at the ADISQ conference in Montreal this week. I will be doing the afternoon keynote and speaking on “Go to Market Strategies for Musicians”, describing what is working in today’s environment and suggestions for the future.

Here is a presentation developed for clothing manufacturer Carhartt as they try and capitalize on the popularity of their products with the youth market. Interesting trends and stats posted by students from Parsons The New School for Design. “By identifying the forces at play in the world of music and the behaviors that are driving those forces, one can identify particular patterns that support current trends. By looking forward to what the future of music may encompass, this presentation aims to provide Carhartt, with valuable insight that will help the brand as a whole, cater to the future of urban millenials.”

At last week’s Billboard Futuresound conference in San Francisco, Deadmau5 aka “Joel Zimmerman” gave a candid interview which you can listen to here. He talked freely about his career, the current EDM scene and where things are heading.

I will be moderating a discussion this Friday at Babson’s Entrepreneurship Forum on Distruption in the Music Industry. This year’s 11th annual forum is following a theme of Celebrating Entrepreneurs of All Kinds. From an acclaimed singer/songwriter and a young man fighting gang violence through his non-profit organization to a designer/entrepreneur whose shoes are worn by Lady Gaga and Beyonce, we are showcasing entrepreneurship from every angle.

Here are the questions we will be discussing:

What is an music entrepreneur today? What is is like to be an artist, a manager, agent or music business person in the current music ecosystem? What drives you?

How is the music business different from other exciting startup businesses today? What are the challenges and what are the advantages?

What do you think about the state of the music industry? Apple, Pandora, Spotify, Live Nation, Music Apps. Where are we headed?

There has been a lot of talk about a “level playing field” having been created in the music industry with the advent of free music, file sharing and streaming. The argument goes something like – there is more music being consumed and created today than ever before in history. Anyone can make a record in their bedroom. – Is the field level? Has it ever been?

What is your business model?

How will musicians make money in the future? What types of business structures do these creative professionals need around them?

What’s it going to take to bring stability to the music industry and create efficient business models that match consumers behavior and expectations?

What are opportunities for the entrepreneur today in music?

The event features three tracks: People, Trends, and Skills. Each track explores entrepreneurship through a different lens. The People track connects attendees to speakers through a series of short talks, featuring the unique stories of our diverse group of successful entrepreneurs. The Trends track brings in a combination of entrepreneurs, executives, academics, and policy advisors to explore relevant entrepreneurial trends. Finally, the Skills track provides hands-on training for attendees in search of interactive sessions designed to provide skills applicable to any business venture.

Roger McNamee is probably the coolest investor I know. He has called it right so many, many times and just did it again with Facebook. You have to pay attention to him. I have been “schooled” by him on more than one occassion and for that I am eternally grateful.

Here are his thoughts on the road ahead, taken from a Mashable keynote presentation he made the other day. Great stuff if you want to try and make money in web and mobile tech in the years ahead.

The shift is away from the desktop experience of free undifferentiated content. Mobile users don’t navigate the Internet with Google searches. They use apps, which deliver a better experience. And they spend much more time within those apps than on any web story.

Instead of needing tens of millions of lightly engaged users in order to be considered successful, McNamee hypothesizes that future success will come from smaller numbers of even more engaged — and thus more valuable — users.

It will, he believes, will be built not on the Google-controlled HTML4 web nor within Apple-controlled apps, but using HTML5, which allows for differentiated, engaged experiences without the downsides of the app store.

“The basic success factors going forward are going to be exactly opposite of those we’ve had in recent years,” he said.

HYPEBOT: Your new focus is on consulting and investing. Are there any sectors, particularly within music and music tech, that particularly interest you or where you see the most room for growth?

DAVE KUSEK: Online education is one of them. This is an area that is already transforming how people learn and gain job skills and it is only going to grow as time goes on. There are big opportunities here that will effect tens of millions of people around the world. Online training is going to be huge. Job requirements are shifting and people need to be able to adapt to changing circumstances that can benefit them. The traditional model of higher education is already under pressure and there are many people and companies exploring alternative models that are very interesting.

The other area I am bullish on is live music and live events. The live concert experience cannot be digitized, yet can benefit enormously from technology. There really has not been much innovation in live music or in music merchandising beyond ticketing. I think there is a lot more that can be done with mobile technology and am actively working in this area. My investment in Tastemate is one way of digging into this potential in a meaningful way. We will be bringing our service to a venue near you, very soon.

I also think that there is potential to expand the reach of live performance using remote technologies. I am interested in ways to cut the costs out of touring to make it more profitable and to reach broader audiences. It is amazing to me that there has not been more activity in this area either, so I am looking for companies and people to work with that are thinking differently about what live music is all about and how to make it even more lucrative.

HYPEBOT: What are some of the things that Digital Cowboys has done in the past or is looking to do now?

DAVE KUSEK: We are focused on business development, marketing and product development, particularly in online and mobile services. We also do strategy consulting for businesses wanting to expand or enter new markets or make acquisitions. I say we, because while I am the managing partner, I also leverage a network of people around the world and with different specialties that I bring together to form a team to address the issues. For example, with a lot of the product work that we have done I brought together a team of visual designers and user experience people to execute on the product vision and do the testing. With business development projects I sometimes work with friends that have particular contacts or relationships that are beneficial to my clients. Sometimes I put together a couple different investors or strategic partners to provide capital or distribution or some other need. The main thing is to get the work done and show results, while trying to have some fun and work on interesting projects that are pushing the envelope.

HYPEBOT: There’s some talk of another tech bubble. Do you see think we’re approaching one in music and media technology?

DAVE KUSEK: I do think that some of the deals we have seen recently are off the charts, like Instagram – but who knows? That has all the earmarks of “bubble” written all over it. But Facebook is also about to go public and at their level, what’s another billion dollars?

But really I don’t think overall that we are at the point of frivolousness and excess that we witnessed in the earlier dot-com bubble, at least not yet. I believe that people are just beginning to figure out better ways to communicate and interact and learn via technology. That is having massive implications on the future of society around the world. Take a look at the stock market trend over the past 100 years and you will see that things tend to move up and people get smarter and more prosperous. I am an optimist.

There are a lot of music startups getting funded these days and certainly they are not all going to make it. I think we will see some consolidation in the DIY space as there are probably more companies addressing that market than the market really needs. The same is true for music streaming and distribution and music discovery. I think the real breakthrough companies will be formed by trying to do something completely different, rather than mimicking the past with technology. We’ll see.

DAVE KUSEK: I plan to spend a lot more time posting things to my blog and on digitalcowboys.com. This is a much better way to continue to update original thinking and way more efficient than writing another book. The music industry has gone digital and online outlets like Hypebot really do work as conduits in this business. That is a real bright spot in the transformation of the music industry. So, look for more at futureofmusicbook.com.

Sunday night at Coachella Festival Snoop Dog and Dr. Dre brought Tupac Shakur back from the dead to perform live with them onstage as a hologram. Holy Smokes. He appears on stage and greats the audience with “Yeah, you know what the fuck this is … What up Dre? … What up Snoop? … What the fuck is up Coachella.” The Tupac illusion aka “Holopac” was brought to life by James Cameron’s visual production house Digital Domain, and two hologram-imaging companies, AV Concepts and the U.K.-based Musion Systems at a price estimated at more than $200,000.

The holographic performance is spectacular and very eerie, and there are more shows planned. This is not the first time that holograms have been used in concerts, and these effects are in a way, natural extensions of the laser displays and light shows that have been part of live shows for decades. Madonna, the Black Eyed Peas and (notably) Gorillaz have all been projected as holograms on stage during the show. There is a laser light touring show of Pink Floyd featuring “none” of the band members. If this can be done with Tupac, it brings up very interesting questions about the future of live shows and exactly who or what we will be seeing.

Can you imaging the Rolling Stones 2050 “Skeletons in the Closet” Tour? The Beatles finally play Shea Stadium in high fidelity? “Elvis Comes Alive”? Will nothing be sacred?

I am not sure if this is science fiction or our worst nightmare, or both. Will live performers really even be needed in the future? If the wizards at visual production companies can create virtual artists in 3D that can strut on stage, engage the audience, and belt out their latest hits – who exactly will be entertaining us? If the music industry can strip out the artists and replace them with computer generated formulaic constructs that are programmed to entertain and mesmerize, what will live music become? Its already happend with the “Chipmunks” and “Gorillaz” and “Hatsume Miku” and “Dethklok”. “This is just the beginning,” Ed Ulbrich, chief creative officer at Digital Domain told the LA Times, “Dr. Dre has a massive vision for this.” Virtual artists are becoming a thing of the present.